Connect with Steve Blue
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenblue/
Website: https://www.stevenlblue.com/
Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Steve Blue. Steve is President and CEO of Miller Ingenuity, which is a high-tech company in the transportation space. He's also the bestselling author of five books and a speaker and consultant. Steve, welcome to the show.
Steve Blue: Thank you, Lisa. It's a pleasure to be here.
Lisa Ryan: Steve, share a bit about your background and what led you to do what you're doing.
Steve Blue: I've been in manufacturing for 45 years and in senior leadership in manufacturing for the last 40. In the last 25 years, I've been the CEO of a manufacturing company, so I know the landscape of manufacturers.
I have written five books. One of them became a bestseller. I'm a professional speaker. Just in the last year, I spoke at Harvard Business School, the United Nations, and Carnegie Hall, to name a few. Now and again, I'll do some consulting, but mostly it's professional speaking, authoring books, and then running my own company, which, as anybody in your audience will know, that's a full-time job in and of itself.
Lisa Ryan: Before the show started, you and I were talking about company culture, and you said that you'd created a killer company culture in your company. I want to dive deep into that because with the workforce, with workers so hard to find these days to begin with, it's critical to create the type of workplace culture that keeps the people once you have them. So, share your philosophy regarding company cultures and some specific things you did within your company.
Steve Blue: First of all, in my view, culture is everything. It is absolutely everything. It provides a foundation for profit, employee satisfaction, and shareholder satisfaction.
And if you don't have the right culture, I can give you examples of the wrong culture. If you've ever traveled on an airplane lately, you know exactly what a wrong culture looks like. It's always amazing to me to use that example, Lisa. You get on an airplane, and the flight attendants work for the same people. They all work for the same company. They have the same benefits, working conditions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And one will be miserable, and the other will be absolutely delightful. So it's hard. It all comes down to culture. In my company, we have several tenants of culture that we believe in.
One of them is community. Another is ethics. Another is excellence. Most companies should have foundational cultures, and then your company might have a few different than mine, but people will resonate with the kind of culture you have in a company. Now, if it's a crappy culture, and if it's a culture of, we'll do what we have to, and no more than we have to get along, that's going to attract a certain kind of employee, and it'll resonate with a specific type of employee.
But if you have a high-performance culture, you know what I always say, Lisa, is every company should strive to have a Cirque Du Soleil culture. Have you ever seen Cirque du Soleil?
Lisa Ryan: Yes, several.
Steve Blue: There you go. And I'm, I bet you everybody in your audience has, and one thing you don't see in a Cirque du Soleil show is somebody going, Hey, that's not my job.
I'm not catching you today. I don't feel like catching you today. They never grumble. They always come to work every day, all jazzed up with a mission to do better today than they did yesterday. And I don't know why you wouldn't want a...
